


Office Space (Take 2)

by Lokisgame



Series: Office Space [2]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Developing Friendships, F/M, Fluff and Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-29
Updated: 2017-08-29
Packaged: 2018-12-21 12:10:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11943900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lokisgame/pseuds/Lokisgame
Summary: Like every Monday morning these past few months, she went down to the basement, but instead of scent of black coffee and cologne she found a note stuck to the door in Mulder’s messy handwriting.





	Office Space (Take 2)

Like every Monday morning these past few months, she went down to the basement, but instead of scent of black coffee and cologne she found a note stuck to the door in Mulder’s messy handwriting.  
_“End of the hall”_  
As every good investigator would, she followed the directions to see what he was up to.

The door was open and Scully stopped dead in her tracks, seeing Mulder trying to push the desk over carpeted floor.  
“Mulder what are you doing?” She asked leaning on the door jamb.  
“Scully, good, you’re here, grab the other end” he looked a little breathless so she stepped over a pile of books and went to help.  
The office looked bigger than his previous one, with a walled off section that looked like a miniature lab. The walls were lined with empty tables, cabinets, and bookshelves. Glass-cases and cork boards hung on walls, the room smelled of new carpet and paint.  
They moved the desk a few inches and Mulder looked around apparently pleased with the result.  
“So, what do you think?” resting his fists on his hips, with rolled up sleeves and hair a complete mess he looked sexy as hell, not that she’d ever tell him that.  
“I don’t understand, you’re moving your office?”  
“Our office, Scully” he smiled and came to her side, rushing her out and back to his old place, talking the whole time.  
“I thought if we’re going to work together we should have more room, and windows, did you notice the skylights? I’ve ordered a desk for you, but the maintenance said it’ll take a few weeks to get here, so in the mean time we’ll have to share, I hope you don’t mind, it’s only temporary, okay?”  
“It’s fine, I’ll wait, but what brought this on?”  
“I don’t want us to end like Jerry and me, from what you did already, you deserve better, and I don’t want you to think that I’m not taking you seriously” his honesty took her a little by surprise, but it wasn’t an unpleasant one.  
“Mulder, I’m speechless” she looked up at him, truly touched.  
“It’s nothing, and besides, I’ll need your help to move all this stuff. Between you and me, we should deal with it in no time.”  
“Okay, where do we start?”  
“The filing cabinets are already there, but I had to empty everything else, so there’s some papers and quite a few books, as you can see” he said pointing a large pile of thick volumes in the corner of the room  
“You want to keep the newspaper clippings too?” She asked looking around for anything he might have missed.  
“Yeah”  
“And you’re keeping the poster, right?”  
“You like it?” It was his turn to be surprised.  
“Yeah, it’s very you” she smiled kneeling by the books, looking at the titles, one more outrageous than the last.  
“Thanks” Mulder didn’t sound too pleased  
“Why do you keep it then?” She laughed at his reaction,  
“I don’t” he chuckled “let’s say it’s yours now”  
“Well, I love it, so thank you” she sent him her sweetest smile.  
“Are you mocking me Scully?”  
“Not at all” she got up and looked around the mess they were about to tackle “how about we do this, we take all the books first, then all the papers, then all the stuff from walls, and once we moved everything to the new place, we’ll sort it and find it a new place.”  
“You’re the army brat, I figured you’ll have more experience with moving than I have” he passed her and picked up the first stack of books.  
“Be glad you don’t have to leave your friends behind”  
“No, I’m taking my friends with me this time” he teased and gave her one of his funny slow winks before he turned and left the room. She tried not to overthink it, just picked up some books and followed him to their new place instead. 

They took many trips like that and Scully silently cursed the new heels she decide to wear that day. It took two hours to move everything and set it in neat rows of books and folders against the wall.  
“Why didn’t you tell me you planned this” she sighed leaning against the wall, resting one foot, then the other.  
“I thought I’ll surprise you” he took her hand and pulled her down to the floor with him “sit down, let’s take a break”  
“At this rate we’ll never finish today”  
“So we’ll finish tomorrow, it’s not like someone is waiting for the old place anyway” he settled next to her and started to untie his shoes.  
“What are you doing?” She asked puzzled as he indeed took them off.  
“My feet are killing me too” he leaned over her stretched out legs and before she could stop him, grabbed her ankles in one hand and pulled her shoes off as well.  
“Forgive the manhandling, but I’d rather not have you step on my toes wearing these, and don’t worry, the carpet is new” she flushed and tucked her feet beneath herself, a little self conscious. Now he’d know how small she really was and she never liked feeling small, especially since she joined the boys club.  
“I won’t be much help to you like this” she said quietly watching him align her shoes next to his by the door.  
“On the contrary” he smiled stretching his legs and picking a few seeds from the bag hidden in his pants pocket, offered them to her wordlessly, Scully shook her head “we’ll do the top shelves together then you’ll take care of the rest of the bookcase while I start on the rain forest there”  
They both looked at the stacks of papers, folders and notebooks, not so long ago she mocked him for not cleaning his desk, now it’s come back to bite him in the ass.  
“When I was a kid, I had this routine” she said absently  
“I bet you did” Mulder chuckled under his breath but she let it slide, having learned to read his tone and infliction, even his laughs, very quickly.  
“Every book I owned had it’s place, so the bookcases changed, but the arrangement stayed the same, the same was with clothes, Missy had right side of the closet, left was mine.”  
“Missy?”  
“My older sister”  
“Ah” he nodded and she continued.  
“Moving a lot made us think what to keep, and what leave behind, we didn’t keep knick-knacks, china dolls or things like that, I had books, she had records, and when we moved, we knew exactly how long it will take to pack and move out”  
“Real navy brats” he smiled cracking another seed in his mouth  
“Yeah, my dad ran a tight ship”  
“You have other siblings?”  
“Two brothers, Bill and Charlie, one in the navy, the other moved to England to work on his PhD”  
“What’s he studying?”  
“Math”  
“Cool” there was a something off in his tone, but she didn’t force him to explain, she kind of knew anyway. Mulder got up and reached out one hand to help her “Come on, let’s see how much we can get done before lunch” 

“Mulder, how many books on paranormal phenomena do you have?”  
“I don’t know, never thought about it” he said from the other side of the room, sitting crosslegged on the floor, sorting case files from trash.  
“Forty seven” she said, moving books between shelves. She put all the books in the bookcase and was trying to find a pattern to it, Mulder looked up from his reading.  
“What are you doing? Are you color coding it or something?”  
“No, I’m just trying to group them into some sort of categories” she looked at the two volumes in her hands, one about demonology the other about European pagan cults, not sure if they should go with norse and greek mythology or religion in general.  
Mulder looked at his watch and felt his stomach rumble.  
“I have to stretch my legs” he got up and put on his shoes “I’ll be right back”  
“Okay” she didn’t look up from her task, quite fascinated by the illustrations of the medieval torture chambers in a book about witchcraft.  
A soft kick at the door what seemed like a moment later pulled her back to reality.  
“I brought lunch” Mulder smiled handing her a sandwich and a paper coffee cup. She noticed the logo, he brought the good stuff.  
“Wow, you went out for this?”  
“I needed a little walk” He moved past her and sat on the desk “come on, let’s eat, I’m starving”  
“Salmon and cream cheese?” She asked fumbling with the bag and coffee.  
“Is it okay?” Mulder looked at her as if he made the biggest mistake of his life.  
“Yeah, sure, it’s fine” she assured him and in moments decision ignored the one chair and sat on the desk next to him “Thank you”  
“Tomorrow you’re buying, now dig in”  
The coffee was really good and just as she liked it, and sipping it whilst still hot, Scully looked around the office.  
“I don’t think we’ll finish arranging everything in one day”  
“Yes we will, I’m almost done, you see that pile there?” He pointed out a large stack by the door “that’s trash, that small one there are case files that will go back into the archive, and that third one, those are some reports that I’m still deciding what to do about them, and things we could look into in the near future”  
“And I think I’m done with the books, so that leaves us with the back room and message boards, I’ll leave that to you” she looked around chewing a bite of her sandwich “but now when I look at this place, it needs something more”  
“Like what?” He asked wiping his mouth with a paper napkin.  
“You still have those prints you bought on our trip to Houston?”  
“Yeah, you think we should hang them here?”  
“If you don’t have a better place in mind”  
“I guess” Mulder looked around and had to admit, that apart from Scully’s ‘I Want To Believe’ the walls looked a little bare “I could bring them tomorrow, and we’ll see what works best”  
“Great”  
Her feet were still bare, legs crossed at the ankles as she dangled them in front of her. He noticed the pink nail polish on her toes and smiled, there was a bit of cuteness under those diplomas after all.  
His phone chirped inside his pocket. One glance at the caller ID made Mulder end the call and go back to his lunch. The girl wasn’t worth missing this team building seminar.  
“We need to get you a chair” he smiled at Scully, sipping iced tea from a plastic cup.


End file.
